VILNIUS MAMA JAZZ 2023 / TIGER TRIO (FR, US), EURORADIO JAZZ ORCHESTRA

TIGER TRIO – NICOLE MITCHELL, JOELLE LEANDRE, MYRA MELFORD (US, FR)

Nicole Mitchell – fl
Joelle Leandre – db
Myra Melford - p

The trio is credited as “the fount of inspiration” and “an excitement and a joy that's not often paralleled in any music” by the press, so prepare to be surprised. Separately, these musicians are amazing. Together, they are just phenomenal.

The Tiger Trio, a guest of the Vilnius Mama Jazz festival, is a group of three acclaimed performers who enjoy the art of spontaneous composition. The musicians are well known in the field of free jazz improvisation. Individually they have each demonstrated their musical talent and now, jointly create an incredible sense of musical communion.

American pianist Myra Melford, flautist Nicole Mitchell and French bassist Joëlle Léandre, have been well recognised on the improvised music scene for several decades. They first appeared on stage together seven years ago, and since then, they have been writing the colourful story of the Tiger Trio. The trio formed as a result of Melford’s Doris Duke Foundation Artist Residency Programme at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The residency, culminated in the Jazz and Improvised Music Festival, and for her performance Melford chose to invite Léandre and Mitchell to join her. After their performance, the musicians realised that they have a rarely discovered spark of creative energy between them. In 2016, the trio released their debut album Unleashed, followed by the album Map of Liberation in 2018, a result of their tour in the US and around Europe. The band’s activities almost immediately attracted the attention of music critics and jazz connoisseurs. This is unsurprising, given their individual creative experience earned prior to forming the Tiger Trio.

Myra Melford is an avant-garde jazz pianist. She began to ‘improvise’ on the piano at the age of three. Subsequently she attended piano lessons and studied classical piano, but she stopped her studies to pursue a greater creative freedom. Myra might have taken a totally different path, because she did initially study the environmental science. But, her fascination with improvisational jazz music got the better of her. She became acquainted with Anthony Braxton, a guest of last year’s Vilnius Mama Jazz, and other free music devotees. Soon she returned to her instrument, choosing to study composition. Then, in the 1980s, she ventured into the world of jazz. Before long, she was playing with Dave Douglas, Hans Bennink and other jazz greats. In 2000, she formed the Crush trio, playing alongside American drummer Kenny Wollesen and Japanese bassist Stomu Takeishi. One interesting creative project followed another as Myra explored (and continues to explore) musical horizons. In India, for example, she studied Indian music and upon her return to the US, lived for a while in an ashram. In 2004, Myra became the Professor of Composition and Improvisational Practices at the University of California, Berkeley, and later formed several groups of various sonic expression and composition – the Trio M, the Dialogue duo, and the Snowy Egret quintet. In 2013, Melford was named a Guggenheim Fellow, just one of the many accolades awarded to the pianist. The US media has described her as “an explosive player” and someone who “can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn’t seem to have been designed for” but such descriptions are far too modest.

The New York City Jazz Record magazine that follows the New York’s jazz pulse, featured the flautist Nicole Mitchell on its March cover. This is just one of the many signs of how much attention jazz professionals bestow on this musician. The US magazine, Downbeat, has repeatedly voted Mitchell as the best flautist of the year. She collaborated with the famous avant-garde jazz collective, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and founded her Black Earth Ensemble admired by festival audiences across the globe. It’s hard to imagine that Mitchell’s jazz career began with busking. Today, Mitchell is a professor at the University of Virginia, a recipient of the Herb Alpert award, and someone who published her first book in 2022, combining the genres of memoir and fiction, to reveal yet another talent, writing. Frequency, the Artifacts trio, and the Black Earth Ensemble (mentioned earlier), are just some of a series of musical projects that reveal Nicole’s creativity. “Probably the most inventive flautist of the past 30 years of jazz,” commented the US daily, The New York Times when writing about Mitchell. Once this musician takes to the stage, there can be no doubt about it.

The bassist, Joëlle Léandre, is a European avant-garde, improvised music star known for her collaboration with the composers Morton Feldman and John Cage. Indeed, Cage has created music dedicated to Joëlle. Other collaborations include the composer Pierre Boulez and contemporary choreographer Merce Cunningham. These legendary names do not, however, overshadow the musician’s own creative exploits. In 1983, Léandre became a member of the European Women’s Improvising Group (EWIG). She attended to the topic of feminism on stage at several stages of her career – her own Les Diaboliques trio formed during the 1990s was also dedicated to this topic. This musician has contributed her instrument to over 180 music albums, and she does not seem to be slowing down any time soon. From Anthony Braxton and John Zorn to Derek Bailey, Steve Lacy, and Fred Frith, you will find few legendary names in the field of free jazz and improvised music that Léandre has not collaborated with. “She is like a sculptor modelling musical poems,” is how jazz double-bass player William Parker described Joëlle’s talent. Inspiring, musical sisterhood, is what the members of the trio will bring to the Vilnius Mama Jazz scene. Tiger Trio plays music that is powerful, playful, colourful and unpredictable, that cannot be confused with anything else.

EURORADIO JAZZ ORCHESTRA

Leader Jievaras Jasinskis

Axel Mårdsjö - asax (SR/SE), Pavlo Barabashchuk - asax (UA:PBC/UE),  Emma Rawicz – tsax (BBC/UK),  Joël Metz – tsax (MSP/LU),  Karolis Šarkus – bsax (LRT/LT),  Agnes Darelid - trmb (SR/SE),  Carlotta Armbruster - trmb (WDR/DE),  Guro Kvåle - trmb (NRK/NO),  Christina Lachberger – btrmb (ORF/AT),  Martin Declercq - tpt (Radio France/FR),  Reinis Puriņš - tpt (LR/LV),  János Löber - tpt (DKU/DE),  Maj Kavšek - tpt (RTVSLO/SI),  Rahel Talts – p, keys (ERR/EE),  Kryštof Tomeček – ag, eg (CR/CZ),  Oskari Siirtola – db, bg (YLE/FI),  Bruna Matić – dr (HRT/HR),  Zacchary Leblond – perc, vib/mar (Radio France/FR)

The Euroradio Jazz Orchestra is an international youth big band formed from the best young musicians nominated each year by public broadcasters in a different country. In 2023, Lithuania will be the host of this orchestra for the first time. The Lithuanian Radio and TV (LRT) is in charge of the smooth implementation of its activities.

The orchestra was formed in 1965, and each year the members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) would suggest the best jazz musicians from their countries to take part in the orchestra. It became an elite international collective, known as the EBU Big Band. In 2005, the Danish organization Swinging Europe took over the patronage of the orchestra and suggested focusing on attracting young talent. So it evolved into the European Youth Jazz Orchestra, becoming a prestigious talent pool that in 2008, toured the world. Since 2014, the orchestra has been known as the Euroradio Jazz Orchestra. A format was agreed, whereby each time a different broadcaster will host the orchestra in their own country, ensuring a programme worthy of an international collective, providing suitable conditions for rehearsals, arranging logistics, and of course, arranging live Euroradio broadcasts. This is how the orchestra was formed each time in the Czech Republic, Switzerland, France, Latvia, Austria, Germany... This year, LRT KLASIKA suggested to the Euroradio Jazz Producers Community to bring together this jazz orchestra in Lithuania and to realise the musical vision of Jievaras Jasinskis.

Jievaras Jasinskis is a well-known Lithuanian jazz composer and arranger. He has earned recognition from audiences and professionals alike. Jasinskis has deep knowledge of the specifics of the big band (he was the leader of the Kaunas Big Band and also formed the Vilnius JJazz Ensemble). His creative work is based on Duke Ellington’s principle: he allocates individual passages to musicians rather than to instruments, taking into account the individual sound and strengths of each musician. Since the synergy of unity and diversity is at the heart of the Euroradio Jazz Orchestra, Jasinskis’ music is the perfect way to reveal it.